The Isvarapratyabhijnakarika of Utpaladeva with the Author’s Vrtti: Critical edition and annotated translation

The Isvarapratyabhijnakarika (IPK) of Utpaladeva (early X century C.E.) is the foundation stone of the Pratyabhijna school and constitutes the main theoretical framework of the Trika. It is the most important philosophical work of non-dual tantric Shaivism as a whole.

Utpaladeva devoted two commentaries to his IPK, a vrtti and, later on, a tika. or Vivarti (now almost totally lost).  According to Abhinavagupta, the IPK and the vrtti thereon were composed by Utpaladeva at the same time. This makes the vrtti and indispenable tool to grasp the original meaning of the difficult karikas of the Isvarapratyabhijna. Unfortunately, all vrtti manuscripts from Kashmir break off at the same point, and consequently, so did the edition (also faulty in many points) published in the Kashmir Series of texts and studies in 1918.

The present book, originally published in the Serie Orientale Roma (IsMEO), contains the first critical edition of the IPK and, for the first time, the complete text of the Vrtti on the basis of a unique Malayam manuscript discovered in Trivandrum Library by R. Torella, who has also made use of the other incomplete manuscripts from Kashmir. The edition is accompanied by an English translation with copious exegetical notes, which highlight the connections of Utpaladeva’s thought with the coeval schools of Indian philosophy and, first of all, with the Buddhist pramana tradition.

The book is completed by an elaborate Introduction, three Indexes and a Bibliography.

About the Author(s)

Raffaele Torella is Professor of Sanskrit at University of Rome “Sapienza”, where he has also taught for long Indian Philosophy and Religion, and Indology. He is the President of the Italian Association for Sanskrit Studies. He is also the Director of Rivista degli Studi Orientali and Rivista di Studi Sudasiaici.

His main publications include (with G. Boccali) Eros and Emotions in India and Tibet (Turin : Einaudi, 2007; in Italian); The Philosophical Traditions of India: an Appraisal, Varanasi: Indica Books, 2011; Sivasutra with Ksemaraja’s Vimarsini Milan : Adelphi, Milan 2013 (in Italian); “Passions and emotions in the Indian philosophical-religions”, in P. Bilimoria. A. Wenta (eds.) Emotions in Indian Thought-Systems, London: Routledge 2015; (ed. with B. Baumer) Utpaladeva, Philosopher of Recognition, Delhi: DK Printworld 2016; “Saiva Nondualism”, in J. Tuske (ed) Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics (Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy). London; Bloomsbury 2017.